The Grand Hotel at 1232–1238 Broadway at the corner of West 31st Street in the NoMad neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, was built in 1868 and was designed by Henry Engelbert in the Second Empire style. Englebert designed the hotel for Elias S. Higgins, a prosperous carpet manufacturer and merchant, who had also utilized Engelbert's services to put up a marble-fronted warehouse on White Street near Broadway, and would go on to employ him to design the Grand Central (later Broadway Central) Hotel as well.

At the time the Grand Hotel was built, the area of Broadway between Madison Square and Herald Square was the premier entertainment district in the city, teeming with theatres, restaurants and hotels. The sleazier establishments on the side streets soon gave the district a new name, the "Tenderloin". When the theater district moved uptown again, the area became part of the Garment District, and the Grand Hotel became a cut-rate residential hotel.[2][3][4]